Chapter
Seven

Tokyo
Nights

Akane placed the small blue bowl on
the table, followed by two dark ivory chopsticks on top of the bowl. She stared
at the position of the two objects and then adjusted the placement of the
chopsticks so they looked directly parallel to the table. She wanted to make
everything perfect for tonight. Once again, another perfect day in Tokyo.

As she prepared for dinner, Akane was
also on the phone. “Thank you for the tickets, Ranko,” Akane said. “Yeah,
Ranma would fear losing face if he asked so I’ll just say that we won the
lottery or something…yeah, he’ll believe anything.” Akane listened intently
to Ranko’s squeakings on the phone.

“Yeah,” Akane said on the phone. “Ranma
had to do a demonstration at another dojo so he won’t be back till later tonight.”
Akane fidgeted.

“Yeah, I’m having a friend over,” Akane gulped.

Ranma took his time walking through
the streets of Nerima and back towards his home. He wanted to enjoy the warm
weather and peace. It was a sense of peace that he had never felt before.
Not when Ryoga and him used to run across roof tiles, chasing each other.
For a brief second, Ranma thought he saw the familiar yellow bandana-boy dashing
across one of the roofs. But it was only a mirage. Ranma tried to shrug the
image out of his head.

“Konban wa, Ranma-san,” Tanaka-san
said. Ranma turned around and greeted the elderly man. Mr. Tanaka was the
Tendo’ nearest neighbor. He was walking with elderly Mrs. Tanaka, a woman
with white hair tied up in a bun. She wore a beautiful red kimono. The couple
was going for a quiet stroll on a warm Nerima night. Ranma closed his eyes
and pictured that he and Akane would take their place when they turned old
and gray.

“I thought you had a training class
today,” Mr. Tanaka said.

“I did but they cancelled it at the
very last minute,” Ranma replied. “It turns out that they can’t afford my
services.” He smiled.

“You do have to repay for the damage
you and your friends did to the house,” Mr. Tanaka replied. “And you are doing
so well.” Ranma nodded. He had taken responsibility for the dojo and taught
classes all over Japan, gradually paying back the mortgage that Soun Tendo
used to pay for the dojo.

Out of the corner of Ranma’s eyes,
he noticed another guy standing at the corner. The guy was an attractive Japanese
man with short black hair and slanted black eyes. The guy was also holding
a couple of small blood-red flyers in his hands. Mr. Tanaka took one look
and huffed. “Another one!” he muttered.

“The city is becoming corrupt with all of those ‘men’
around here,” Tanaka-san grumbled. “They just come to our peaceful part of
the city and advertise prostitution and other such filthy endeavors.”

“Has the mayor done something about it?” Ranma asked.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Tanaka,” Ranma said
as-a-matter-of-factly. “I’ll take care of it,” He turned towards the young
guy who was waving a bunch of flyers. In his gruffest, butch voice he asked
the guy what he was doing in the peaceful, conservative side of Tokyo. The
Tanakas continued their peaceful walk through Tokyo.

After another delicious dinner of Ukyou’s
okonomiyaki on Akane’s clean china, the two lovers curled up together in Akane’s
living room, wrapped up in Akane’s soft blue blankets. The nights were starting
to get colder in Japan and a bitter wind blew outside. Akane felt safe in
Ukyou’s arms.

Akane and Ukyou finally agreed on a football game after
flipping the television channels for a while. They stared at the blurry fancy
footwork of one of the key players from the J-League as he scored another
goal. “That’s Nakata Shiroi,” Akane pointed at the dashing football player.
He was a clean-cut rugged fellow with spiky brown hair. His bright red soccer
outfit suited him well.

“He’s pretty cute,” Ukyou said.

“Ranma is a big fan,” Akane looked
down jealously. “So,” she looked up at Ukyou. “Did you like any of Ranma’s
other supposed fiancés?”

Ukyou put another chip into her mouth and grinned.
“Shampoo was pretty hot, but she had that really conservative grandma.” She
smiled at Akane. “We couldn’t do anything.” Akane gritted her teeth quietly.
She was jealous of Shampoo.

“You know who I also found hot?” Ukyou
leaned towards Akane. Akane’s eyes opened. “But you have to promise not to
laugh.” Akane nodded. “Kodachi.”

“KODACHI!” Akane jumped up.

“Yeah, she was a little bit psycho,”
Ukyou laughed. “But she had really gorgeous legs. And she could pull off wearing
a leotard pretty well.”

“So,” Akane leaned towards Ukyou. “Of
all the girls that you know, who do you find the hottest?” Ukyou looked directly
at Akane and kissed her.

“Good answer,” Akane smiled when she
got up for air.

“So what are you doing here in this
peaceful and decent part of Tokyo,” Ranma said gruffly toward the young man.
A closer look revealed a lean and muscular Asian guy wearing a blood red shirt
that accented his small pectorals and tight blue jeans. “Are you an escort
because this is an elderly neighborhood. Only old prevents would want you.”

“As if I wanted them,” snapped the
guy back flamboyantly. “I’m just a club promoter for a men’s only event that’s
going down tonight.” Ranma wondered if that meant prostitution.

The young man handed Ranma a flyer.
The flyer was also an attractive blood red color. Ranma looked at the flyer.
It said “Club Red” and the location of the event would be some club called
“Dragon” located in an area that Ranma wasn’t familiar with.

“It’s in Shinjuku-Nichome,” the young guy said happily.
“All you need to do is take the subway down to Shinjuku. You literally can’t
miss it!”

“Isn’t that a red-light district?”
Ranma asked. He had never been into that district because many of his friends
told him that prostitutes lived there and since he had a fiancé, he didn’t
need Shinjuku’s services.

“That’s the stereotype,” the guy huffed. “Even though
there are whorehouses and geisha houses, Shinjuku is also known for its male-centric
clubs, if you know what I mean.” The guy winked at Ranma, who suddenly felt
a cringe in the pit of his stomach.

“Well, I’m going home to my wife,”
Ranma said suddenly and very nervously. “So I think I’ll pass on this club
for tonight.” The guy looked crestfallen.

“Such a waste of a hot guy like you,”
the young man reached out to touch Ranma’s chest but Ranma quickly brushed
the guy’s hand off. With a look of shock on his face, he walked away.

The television was now off.

Akane had her face deep between
Ukyou’s squirming legs. She had never gone down on Ukyou, or any other woman
for that matter. But tonight she wanted to give it a try. And she was actually
enjoyed the experience, inhaling Ukyou’s warm scent, tasting her sweet nectar,
and feeling her two muscular legs tense up between Akane’s head. Akane could
hear Ukyou squirming with pleasure.

Akane continued her tongue-dance
around Ukyou’s privates. Ukyou leaned back with pleasure. Her nipples were
now hard. With another hand, Akane foddled Ukyou’s perky breasts and was rewarded
by more of her soft moans. Ukyou’s long brown hair lightly touched the dining
room table.

Ukyou’s moans were so warm and loud
that the two women did not hear Ranma’s key fumble with the lock of the dojo.
Akane continued to pleasure Ukyou whose loud moans echoed through the small
doors of the room. Ranma rushed into the dining room thinking that Akane was
in trouble and an unpleasant surprise greeted him. The sight of the beautiful
and naked Ukyou Kuonji, her head looking up to the ceiling and the familiar
short tuff of black hair that now rested between Ukyou’s long and muscular
legs.

Ukyo’s face turned to stone the moment Ranma saw her
and she stopped moaning. Akane turned her face around and saw Ranma looking
straight at her. Ranma didn’t know how to react. He felt betrayal, anger,
heartbreak and fragility all at the same time.

“You…whore!” Ranma screamed angrily
and grabbed for a sword, placed conveniently at the top of the wall. Ukyou
quickly made a dash for her spatula and wielded it with such fury and dashed
in front of Akane, ready to defend her maiden’s honor.

“You touch a hair on her head,” Ukyou
said angrily, “And I will kill you.” Akane looked surprised. Ukyou’s brown
eyes stared fiercely at Ranma’s. She breathed heavily as she clutched her
spatula like her life depended on it.

Ranma didn’t know how to exactly
react. He wanted to slash his lesbian wife at that very moment but something
stopped him. His conscious that turned rage into confusion. He couldn’t hold
his sword any longer. Ranma dropped the sword and ran out of the room with
Ukyou’s piercing eyes following him out the door.

Ranma didn’t know what he was doing.
He didn’t know what he was thinking any more. The brief moment with his wife
Akane and his former fiancé Ukyou was enough to cause his head to swim into
a deeper vertigo. And now, he was sitting on a seat in the famed Japanese
bullet train, heading to blinding speeds to no return.

He tried to close his eyes as the memories
flooded through his head. When he was younger, women chased after him. Akane,
Ukyou, Kodachi and Shampoo. Even Ryoga wanted him. He was the object of their
desire and he shrugged each one off until the Tendo-Saotome tragedy made him
realize his duties as a man. He remembered Akane and Ukyou fighting for his
affection, Shampoo calling his name in her sing-song Chinese and Ryoga turning
red with fury every time the girls hit on him. Then he opened his eyes and
realized the truth he had been long avoiding.

It was all a lie.

His life was a lie.

Akane’s betrayal was too much for
him to bear at that moment but it was his own betrayal, the betrayal that
caused Ryoga to leave Japan,that
flew back into his memory. He betrayed his heart for a mirror. A cold, steel,
transparent mirror of a clean traditional Japanese lifestyle. But that mirror
shattered the moment that Ukyou laid her lips on Akane Tendo some time ago.
And thinking about how it could have happened was way too difficult for Ranma.

He held the flyer in his hand nervously
and looked around. As the dim lights of the tunnel flickered on people’s faces
on and off, he realized that no one was caring what he was doing or how he
was feeling at that moment. And among them, a group of men in trenchcoats
staring down at the ground and trying not to look at each other.

“Shinjuku Station,” the computerized
female announcer said friendly. Ranma noticed that the only people who were
getting off this station were men in long, brown trench coats and sunglasses.
If one was going to visit prostitutes then they definitely needed to be incognito.
Ranma nervously walked off the subway, trying to avoid the cold stares of
some of those passengers. It seemed that they knew exactly what Ranma was
going to do.

After following the men through
a dark, gloomy tunnel that was Shinjuku’s station after hours, Ranma re-surfaced
to neon. Neon lights glowing in many different bright colors littered the
dark cityscape. Words in hot pink and bold blue decked tall dark buildings
and small dingy stores.

Ranma looked around. He noticed the
men in trenchcoats were now laughing. They threw off their dull, brown trenchcoats
to reveal shirts that clung to their muscular bodies. They looked at each
other and smiled as they walked deeper into the neon wonderland. Ranma looked
at his own crumpled white shirt and black pants. At least Ranma would fit
in, as he followed the men into the club with the Chinese word for “dragon”
in neon.

Madonna’s “Holiday” blared in the
background and as Ranma walked closer and closer into the Dragon, the music
got louder and louder. The room was dark with a few spotlights traveling around
the club. Since there were no chairs in this area, the men stood and talked.
Ranma looked up and saw a large disco ball that spun the lights around the
crowds, revealing both young and old Japanese men laughing and sipping drinks.
Ranma wondered where the prostitutes or the geisha were. As he scanned the
room, Ranma realized that there were only men in this club. He looked to his
left side and saw two guys holding Asahi beers in front of a warm red backdrop.
The man on the left was a muscular guy wearing a tight white shirt and blue
jeans. His skinnier friend was wearing a black tank top and red leather pants.
After they exchanged a few words in Japanese, they made out with each other.

The sight of two men kissing both
titillated and mortified Ranma. He panicked. He had entered Ryoga’s world.
Ranma quickly slid through several more of the ominous figures and towards
the sanctity of a bar where men quietly drank and were not eying each other.
Madonna’s crackling voice continued to follow him. Ranma quickly slipped into
a chair, avoiding any passive looks towards him.

The bartender was a friendly and
muscular Japanese guy with soft spiky hair tinted red. He wore a white muscle
shirt with silver streaks across the middle. Ranma slumped into one of the
blood red pleather stools as Madonna’s cacophony “Holiday” blared in the background.

“Long day sir?” the bartender asked
in polite Japanese. “What would you like?”

“Yeah,” Ranma muttered sheepishly.
“Hot sake, please.” The bartender pulled out a warm pitcher and a small teacup
and poured the warm white sake into Ranma’s teacup. Ranma started to pull
out his wallet and the bartender halted him. “It’s already been paid for,”
he motioned toward the shadowy figure close to Ranma. “By him.”

Ranma gulped. The shadowy figure walked
up toward Ranma. The lights were too faded for Ranma to figure out who this
person was. The man quietly put down his Asahi beeron the table and sat next
to Ranma. The dark shadows of dancing figures covered his face. The techno
music played on. “I thought you would like some company,” a deep but friendly
voice said.

Ranma fidgeted nervously. “I’ve never
done this before,” he babbled. “I’m new here and I really don’t know where
I am.”

“That’s okay,” the deep voice continued.
The spotlight beamed onto Ranma’s strange friend and lit up his warm, friendly
face. Ranma’s eyes widened. The lights had revealed a handsome man. He wore
a black T-shirt that covered his big muscular body, the black silk sleeves
clinged to his globular biceps. But what drew Ranma most to him was even though
he looked like an American, his eyes were distinctly those of the Japanese
– slanted with brown pupils covered kindly by a hard layer of muscle tissue.
It was looking deep into the Japanese guy’s soft eyes that made Ranma realize
where he had seen that face before.

“You’re Nakata Shi—“ Ranma gasped. Nakata Shiroi shushed
Ranma.

NOTES

The
character of Nakata Shiroi is based on a popular character found on the a
Japanese gay cartoon Web site “Nakatax” (http://homepage2.nifty.com/nakatax/home.html)This
web site is a gay cartoon web site so it does involve MALE NUDITY. Viewer
discretion is advised.

Writing
this section of the novel forced me to do some research on Queer Japanese
lifestyle. According to Utopia, Shinjuku-Nichome is indeed Tokyo’s very own
Castro. The club that Ranma ends up going to is indeed a real club in the
Shinjuku-Nichome district.